Category: Freya’s Freedom

Freya is one of my favourite characters. She’s got a lot of potential for stories after this book – I’m already planning how she gets to be the first Dragon Empress of Elysia for over five hundred years… and I’ll give you a hint, it’s not just because she’s the only legal heir to the throne.

*sighs happily* I just love writing about dragons…

It also introduces another of my favourite characters, a wise-cracking ball of spirit light by the name of Vox. The idea for it (it’s genderless) came from an aborted Tabletop RPG game where the GM (not me this time) had an NPC that was a ball of light. I borrowed the concept and developed Vox.

Freya has many assets, the least of which is her exotic beauty. Having been freed from the benign slavery of the Pleasurehouse, she journeys to Jinra to meet up with her brother Grald. Along the way she meets Sir Vrenstalliren, Paladin of Espilieth, who insists on becoming her guardian.

In the next town the two become five, having been joined by Kraarz, an Orc Shaman; Vox, his Otherworld Spirit Guide and Lin, an Elysian warrior on a quest of her own. It is just as well, for she is walking into a danger she is ill equipped to face alone…

Time for the Excerpt…

“Are we there yet?” Lin asked.

“Would you stop asking that? I can’t concentrate on what I am following if you keep talking,” Vox snapped.

Lin looked at Kraarz and the blind Urakh grinned.

“Be at peace my friend. Vox is following a scent in the otherworld instead of following it directly…”

“This corridor leads all the way round the outside of the dungeon.” Vox said absently.

“We’re going the long way round?” Lin burst in. “Why? My Lady could be dead by the time we get there!”

Vox stopped and looked up at her.

“Lin, please be patient. The route I’m taking avoids the majority of the rooms in this dungeon and with a bit of luck, we’ll reach the Prison without being detected.”

Lin nodded and the Flixen started moving again, his black nose held to the floor.

“How much bigger is Vox going to get?” Lin asked Kraarz quietly. “He won’t fit through the corridors if he gets much bigger, especially with that wingspan.” She glanced up at the folded wings, the tips of the flight feathers brushing through cobwebs near the ceiling.

Kraarz held one hand out and Vox swished its tail, the black tip brushing across his palm. “Hmm. I’d say that he had another foot to full growth. But we’ll be out of here before that happens.”

At the next junction, Vox stopped.

“The prison is to the left.” He sniffed the air and turned right.

“If the prison is to the left, why are we going right?” Lin halted and folded her arms. “I’m not moving any further unless you explain yourself.”

Vox blew out an expressive breath and turned his head back over his shoulder to look at her. “She isn’t there. Why would we go somewhere she isn’t?”

“You said she was in the prison!”

“I was wrong.” Vox shrugged. “It happens sometimes.”

Lin sighed. “All right. Let’s go.” She slipped her sword out of its sheath.

“Good idea.” Kraarz nodded approvingly and snapped his fingers. A ball of green fire appeared over the top of his staff.

The Flixen rolled his eyes. “There aren’t any creatures around. I’d be able to feel them if there were.”

“I thought you said that the Dark Gods shielded dungeons and their creatures from you?” Lin frowned. “Make your mind up.”

“I don’t have a mind, so how can I make it up?” Vox ignored her exasperated cry and moved forward again.

“Where do you think you two are going?” a voice asked from behind them.

“Two? Hello?” Vox blinked. “What about me?”

Lin spun round, the tip of her sword flying out to land in the throat of a large devil demon. A dribble of blue-black blood stained the steel and ran down the creature’s upper body. She pulled back into a defensive stance.

He backed away.

“Steady on. I mean you no harm. I just wanted to know why one of our allies was in the company of an Outlander.” The devil demon looked at Kraarz.

“My race turned from the Aracan Katuvana eons ago,” the Shaman replied. “We found our freedom and a home without him.”

The Devil Demon frowned; his golden cat slit eyes narrowed.

“Then you are an enemy; and the new Custodian was right.”

“New Custodian right? Right about what?” Vox asked.

The corpulent demon straightened his shoulders.

“Looks like I get to do a bit more training.”

Kraarz and Lin had shifted positions gradually, Lin moving in front of Kraarz, but allowing him a clear view of the demon. She raised her sword and the demon grinned, flexing the long black claws on his hands.

“Come on then, Little Outlander. I’ll snap you in half like a fresh femur.”

“Oi!” Vox growled, pushed Lin aside and stalked right up to the demon, tail stiff. “Can you even see me, Blubber butt?” Vox tapped the demon with one huge paw, knocking him off balance and onto the floor.

“What the…” the demon looked around confused and Lin took her moment. Leaping over Vox, she landed, turned and sliced the demon’s head off all in one smooth motion.

“Very well done, Lin,” Kraarz applauded softly.

“I wouldn’t have been able to do it without Vox pushing him over.” Lin used the shaggy red fur on the demon’s twitching legs to clean her sword.

“The demon couldn’t see me,” Vox tilted his head to one side. “Vaarzasia, Hel and Fiör created this body for me. Maybe they have made me invisible to the creatures of the Dark Gods?”

Lin hid a smile at Vox’s confusion.

“Maybe they wanted you to realise that you aren’t the centre of everyone’s attention all the time.”

Vox growled at her and stalked away down the corridor.

Kraarz and Lin followed, laughing.

*****

There are two places that you can read more about Freya and Vox and find out how the rest of the book turned out. The first is in the ebook:

There’s a whole lot more in this edition of the book than there was in the separate ones; Blue Hour Publishingworked hard with me to enhance each book’s potential. There is also some brand new content only seen by my editor and beta readers, so even if you’ve already bought / read the first four books, this one is worth getting!!!

So let’s take a peek at the new content shall we?

*grins wickedly*

A quick meal and several changes of clothing later, they were ready to go. Aranok kept glancing at Kalytia whose beauty shone even more in the tight fitting fighting harness of the Dark Mistress. Her blue dragonscale armour hugged her figure and the smooth faceless helm hid her own face completely, only her eyes were visible through a slot, making her allure all the more dangerous.

On one hip she carried a long coiled whip and on the other a wicked looking sword, its blade writhing like a snake moving through the grass. Her blue dragonscale tunic hugged her figure and fell over matching leggings which ended in spike heeled boots.

Kaltyia took a moment to check her sword and Aranook shuddered. Those spines on the back edge would make for a very messy wound and you could probably open someone’s throat with just the teeth on the hilt. He thought, trying hard not to cut himself on his own blade as he sharpened it. At least the sharkskin and wire will make for a good grip; you’d need one with the amount of blood using it is going to create.

“Where did you get all that?” the half elf asked.

Kalytia slid the blade into its sheath, the dragon headed hilt sparkling where the light hit the gems in the eye and teeth.

“I described the fighting harness of the women we… Loric encountered in the dungeon in Galivor to Eliethor. She had the leatherworkers make it and then she and a mage of Tyr modified it with some of the details from your report of the dungeon in Valdier and Kraaz’s information from Jinra.” Kalytia ran a self conscious hand over her body. “I’ve only worn it once, but it’s really quite liberating. There’s nothing to get in the way of quick movements and the Dragonscale stretches in a way that normal leather armour doesn’t.”

Joran grinned at her.

“If I weren’t in love with Julissa, you’d just have become a target for my affections.”

… and I mean that quite literally – we’re having thundery showers in Wales today and my head is pounding with a pressure headache.

Our weather in the summer goes from this:

Beautiful blue skies, warm sunshine, soft breezes… to this:

Dark grey clouds, portentous and foreboding, brisk winds and chilly rain so fast you’re not sure if you imagined the first sight at all.*sighs*
It’s something that I’ve grown used to. Where I come from in Suffolk, summers were either so hot and dry that we had dust storms forming from the fields as the light breezes picked the topsoil up and turned everyone orange with it; or they were grey, chilly and dankly depressing.

So I moved to Plymouth to go to Uni and found the weather much more to my liking – more blue skies and warm sunshine than cold and wet (except in the winter of course) – although there was that memorable day one summer where we went from hot sunshine to snow / hail and back to sunshine again.
Wales was a bit of a shock to the system, to be completely honest. However, after living here for more than ten years, I’m now inured to the changeable weather!

Anyway, back to the excitement.

It’s hard to define this feeling. It’s definitely excitement, but there’s a lot of fear involved as well. This new edition of the story is all five books in one and it’s a Poison Demon of a book – a proper, epic sized fantasy book.

The cover, as ever, is beautiful – Elizabeth Bank from Selestiele Designs at her best. The editor atBlue Hour Publishing has polished and burnished the content until it gleams, shining like a shiny thing under the bright welsh summer skies (when it is sunny here, it gets very warm and bright) and there’s a little bit of new content included, so even if you’ve read the first four books from when I published them myself, I really would suggest you get this edition!

The fear comes in when I look at how well the fantasy genre is doing in general. The boom produced by the LOTR / Hobbit films is fading and Game of Thrones readers are still waiting for the author to produce the next book in the series (and moaning about it at the same time) but my sort of fantasy, the kind with battles and creatures and destinies, doesn’t seem to be doing that well.
I’m scared that it is going to be too big a book, that it’s not going to do well… oh so many worries that go through my head before I drop off to sleep each night.

All of this is completely normal of course! Ask any writer about the run up to the launch of a new book and you’ll hear the same sort of thing.

If you want to be there for the virtual Launch Party… yes, I’m actually being launched properly… then pop over to facebook and click join at the other end of this link –

#GNUTerry Pratchett

'We keep that name moving in the Overhead,' he said, and it seemed to Princess that the wind in the shutter arrays above her blew more forlornly, and the everlasting clicking of the shutters grew more urgent. 'He'd never have wanted to go home. He was a real linesman. His name is in the code, in the wind in the rigging and the shutters. Haven't you ever heard the saying “A man's not dead while his name is still spoken”?'

- Going Postal by Sir Terry Pratchett

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His name will never be forgotten as long as his name is written. 12th March 2015